1. Field of Invention
The current invention relates to environment property estimation and graphical display, and more particularly to a surgical robot operable to graphically display environment property estimates.
2. Discussion of Related Art
The contents of all references, including articles, published patent applications and patents referred to anywhere in this specification are hereby incorporated by reference.
A teleoperated robot-assisted surgical system such as the da Vinci (Intuitive Surgical Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif., USA) provides a number of advantages over conventional minimally invasive surgery (MIS). It enhances dexterity, enables more precise motions, and provides 3-dimensional (3D) visualization. However, the lack of haptic feedback has been recognized as one of the drawbacks of such teleoperated robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery (RMIS) systems (F. W. Mohr, V. Falk, A. Diegeler, T. Walther, J. F. Gummert, J, Bucerius, S. Jacobs, and R. Autschbach, “Computer-enhanced ‘robotic’-cardiac surgery: experience in 148 patients,” The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, vol. 121, no. 5, pp. 842-853, 2001). Although many research groups, e.g. M. Mahvash, J. Gwilliam, R. Agarwal, B. Vagvolgyi, L.-M. Su, D. D. Yuh, and A. M. Okamura, “Force-feedback surgical teleoperator: Controller design and palpation experiments,” in 16th Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environments and Teleoperator Systems, pp. 465-471, 2008, H. Mayer, I. Nagy, A. Knoll, E. U. Braun, R. Bauernschmitt, and R. Lange, “Haptic feedback in a telepresence system for endoscopic heart surgery,” Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, vol. 16, no. 5, pp. 459-470, 2007, and M. Tavakoli, R. Patel, M. Moallem, and A. Aziminejad, Haptics for Teleoperated Surgical Robotic Systems (New Frontiers in Robotics series), World Scientific Publishing Company, 2008, have studied teleoperation with haptic feedback for surgical applications, the trade-off between stability and transparency, and force sensor issues such as cost, biocompatibility, and sterilizability, make it difficult to develop a practical system (based on current commercially available surgical robots) with realistic haptic feedback (A. M. Okamura, L. N. Verner, C. E. Reiley, and M. Mahvash, “Haptics for robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery,” in Proceedings of the International Symposium Robotics Research, Hiroshima, Japan, Nov. 26-29, 2007) and (A. M. Okamura, “Haptic feedback in robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery,” Current Opinion in Urology, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 102-107, 2009). Thus, surgeons using current RMIS systems principally rely on visual cues such as tissue deformation to estimate how much force a remote tool is applying to tissue.
During a procedure, surgeons often manually palpate biological tissues to investigate anatomical structures. Palpation provides both force-displacement and distributed tactile information. Tissue abnormalities can be differentiated from normal tissue by their mechanical properties, such as stiffness (e.g., K. Hoyt, B. Castaneda, M. Zhang, P. Nigwekar, P. A. di Sant'agnese, J. V. Joseph, J. Strang, D. J. Rubens, and K. J. Parker. Tissue elasticity properties as biomarkers for prostate cancer. Cancer Biomark, 4(4-5):213-225, 2008, Neurophys, 73:88, 1995). In coronary artery bypass grafting surgery (CABG), palpation is especially beneficial in detecting where to place grafts. It is better to graft soft undiseased arteries that are difficult to differentiate visually from calcified arteries. Grafts should not be placed adjacent to or directly onto a calcified artery segment. Without force feedback, finding the location of a calcified artery in heart tissue is quite challenging, and surgeons may be unable to determine the best location for anastomosis (F. W. Mohr, V. Falk, A. Diegeler, T. Walther, J. F. Gummert, J. Bucerius, S. Jacobs, and R. Autschbach, “Computer-enhanced ‘robotic’ cardiac surgery: experience in 148 patients,” The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, vol. 121, no. 5, pp. 842-853, 2001).
There is thus a need for improved surgical robots, components, and methods for environment property estimation